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Emerged or imposed: a theory on the role of physical templates and self-organisation for vegetation patchiness.
- Source :
-
Ecology letters [Ecol Lett] 2013 Feb; Vol. 16 (2), pp. 127-39. Date of Electronic Publication: 2012 Nov 16. - Publication Year :
- 2013
-
Abstract
- In this article, we develop a unifying framework for the understanding of spatial vegetation patterns in heterogeneous landscapes. While much recent research has focused on self-organised vegetation the prevailing view is still that biological patchiness is mostly due to top-down control by the physical landscape template, disturbances or predators. We suggest that vegetation patchiness in real landscapes is controlled both by the physical template and by self-organisation simultaneously, and introduce a conceptual model for the relative roles of the two mechanisms. The model considers four factors that control whether vegetation patchiness is emerged or imposed: soil patch size, plant size, resource input and resource availability. The last three factors determine the plant-patch size, and the plant-to-soil patch size ratio determines the impact of self-organisation, which becomes important when this ratio is sufficiently small. A field study and numerical simulations of a mathematical model support the conceptual model and give further insight by providing examples of self-organised and template-controlled vegetation patterns co-occurring in the same landscape. We conclude that real landscapes are generally mixtures of template-induced and self-organised patchiness. Patchiness variability increases due to source-sink resource relations, and decreases for species of larger patch sizes.<br /> (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.)
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1461-0248
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Ecology letters
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 23157578
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12027